Seventh law of worker entropy

Maxims and arrows Go Premium An invention making life easier, yesterday. Well, in 1804. A hearty collection of the JC’s pithiest adages. Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Maxim Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

The JC’s seventh law of worker entropy states that successful inventions do not make things harder. The JC asserts, without evidence but, he feels, without needing it — for it is an a priori truth as certain as arithmetic or natural selection — there has been no successful innovation in design, commerce or technology in the history of civilisation itself that made life more tedious, difficult, frustrating or inconvenient than it already was.

This law is routinely ignored, at great cost to the poor subject matter experts on whose heads tedium inevitable rains down but also, gratifyingly, on the software as a service vendor whose bright ideas they hawk to middle managers in the legal chief operating office.

See also

• Reg tech
• Why is reg tech so disappointing?
• Technological unemployment